Rocket and wood gasification stoves

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Zasso Nouka
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Rocket and wood gasification stoves

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Rather than take other threads off at a tangent how about we have a thread just for rocket and wood gasification stove discussion. So to get the ball rolling I was looking at this design as a replacement to using cinder blocks.



It could be scaled to any size and maybe have a few air tubes added to the chimney for some secondary combustion type activity. One drawback I can see with this design is the difficulty of cleaning it out. Maybe it could be cast with some sort of cleaning port or something ?

I also quite like the designs of wood gasification stoves like the one Mr Teslonian made



Not sure if rocket and wood gasification stoves are variants of the same idea or completely different design philosophies and then there are gasifying rocket stoves to further complicate matters :roll:

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Re: Rocket and wood gasification stoves

Post by paradoxbox »

Good thread. Not sure how many people will need this but for those of us living near forest this stuff is useful.


I don't think there is any real difference between a normal stove and a gasifying stove, really the object of the gasifying stoves is to get the wood so hot that the wood gasses start escaping and then burn up in the flame - any stove or fire pit, if hot enough, can do this. That will give you a nice smokeless burn, and if it's hot enough it will handle even the most awful waterlogged wood without making a bunch of smoke. There is a moderate chance of steam explosion though :lol: so a sturdy stove is a good idea and that is why I tend to prefer stoves that have an air and fuel hole that faces out sideways rather than a hole you drop fuel down into.

In the side-vent type stoves if any wet wood or river rocks (for heating the house or making a sauna) explode the fragments will blow out the side easily but in the box type they're more likely to obliterate the stove and smash anyone standing nearby.

I am a real fan of this stove, but as we discussed it is difficult to find the correct size cinder blocks in Japan. I suppose that I could make the same design with normal bricks or perhaps fireproof blocks, or even the thin cinder blocks on sale everywhere, but stability becomes a worry once there are too many blocks involved.

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Re: Rocket and wood gasification stoves

Post by Zasso Nouka »

The simplicity of that design is incredible, honestly don't think you could get any simpler.
paradoxbox wrote:Not sure how many people will need this but for those of us living near forest this stuff is useful.
I'm not either but it's fun to play around with fires on cold winter days when there's little farming to be done. Mind you given the price of imported wood stoves in Japan it would be good to see how CYEK's plan works out. I like the idea of taking a cheap-ish Honma stove who's normal output is somewhat minimal and turning that into something capable of heating a house with little extra cost.

paradoxbox wrote:I don't think there is any real difference between a normal stove and a gasifying stove, really the object of the gasifying stoves is to get the wood so hot that the wood gasses start escaping and then burn up in the flame
You can see that happening here



paradoxbox wrote: In the side-vent type stoves if any wet wood or river rocks (for heating the house or making a sauna) explode the fragments will blow out the side easily but in the box type they're more likely to obliterate the stove and smash anyone standing nearby.
Perhaps placing rocks around a stove rather than directly in it might avoid the problem
paradoxbox wrote: I am a real fan of this stove, but as we discussed it is difficult to find the correct size cinder blocks in Japan. I suppose that I could make the same design with normal bricks or perhaps fireproof blocks, or even the thin cinder blocks on sale everywhere, but stability becomes a worry once there are too many blocks involved.
Certainly have to admire the simplicity of it's design and it's a great stove for cooking on outdoors but if you just want to burn up garden waste then something larger is going to be needed, same for heating a house plus you need a chimney to get rid of the smoke and gases.

Here's an interesting video using something similar to the little Honma stoves that sort of turns it into a rocket stove mass heater


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Re: Rocket and wood gasification stoves

Post by Zasso Nouka »

CYEK wrote:Drum for secondary combustion and mass thermal. The idea is hopefully is to have secondary burn in bottom half whilst top half does mass thermal but not sure what to put around it. Creating secondary burn shouldn't be too hard and just needs tubing with holes drilled in that can suck air from outside. The original idea was to make the whole system portable so it could basically move to one of three areas with there own flues. Now I'm leaning more towards having one stove at each end but making the drum movable to each stove but if its covered for thermal mass then a little more difficult.
Given the cost of another drum can why not just have two drum cans ? Moving them around once filled with or surrounded by a thermal mass is going to be a right bugger
CYEK wrote:ZN, What is your definition of soon?
Before freezing from those frigid winters you guys get :D

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Re: Rocket and wood gasification stoves

Post by CYEK »

ZN, I have been following Ernie for a while now and that is where my idea came from. Summer here is still like a frigid winter. was talking to one of my mates about the idea and he said. you know that bloody big burner you have outside, it would only take a day to run some of the piping across to some of your air vents and pump in warm air. he has no understanding of the pleasure of watching wood burn in stove, bloody canadian.

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Re: Rocket and wood gasification stoves

Post by Zasso Nouka »

CYEK wrote: the pleasure of watching wood burn in stove
That is surely one of the big benefits of running a wood stove, watching the flames dancing over the wood as it burns. Calls to something primeval in all of us perhaps.

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